Down the road in Despinos
April and Joel live on the left
Hey everyone! We have been very blessed to have trustworthy contacts in Haiti, both American and Haitian. We work with a young couple who are from the states and live next door to the orphanage we currently work with in the village of Despinos, April and Joel Hess. April is an RN and runs a clinic close to her house. Her and Joel also have a school and a church on the property. They have lived full-time in Haiti for a few years now and are a huge blessing to us for their encouragement, positive attitudes, and true servants’ hearts. We received an email from April yesterday that I want to share with everyone about a great prayer request in Despinos. Yeman is a woman who lives in Despinos that is HIV positive. She received salvation through Christ and was believing the Lord for her healing.
“This has been very hard on us. We have invested many hours in Yeman, going to the doctor treating her, feeding her, encouraging and loving her. She had became very dear to us. In the last three months, Yeman’s faith and relationship with Christ had really flourished. She was so excited to be studying the Bible and learning. She would wake up at 4 am to listen to Christian radio and try to learn the Psalms. She was very faithful to church and very open about her new found walk with Christ. As we know, people can be very cruel and insensitive. She was being persecuted by many people outside her door at night with machete’s etc.. The doctor had recently told her that even with all the treatment, she would never be healed. In the last few weeks, she started to act strange, forget things, and began to wonder off for days, and come home not knowing where she went or what she had done. I was visiting her everyday, praying with her, trying to encourage her, but it seemed the Aids had began to cloud her ability to think clearly, and satan was doing his best to make her fall. One minute she was clear, the next she was not. Saturday night, her mother came knocking at our door at 10 to tell us she had burnt herself. Honestly, I thought it was something small. I rushed to the clinic, to get gloves, protective wear etc.. Nothing prepared me for how bad her situation was. She had burnt her entire body, and her body was still smoking. She had locked her door, and poured gas on her head and lit a match.. Her sister crashed the door in to get to her, but it was too late.
The view from Despinos
